Vijneyah
Vijñeyaḥ (IAST)Translation: "to be realized"
From Mandukya Upanishad (Verse 7)
Mundaka and Mandukya Upanishads (Swami Sharvananda)
Sanskrit: विज्ञयः
Transliteration: Vijñeyaḥ
Translation: "to be realized"
The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad (Swami Krishnananda)
Sanskrit: विज्ञयः
Transliteration: Vijñeyaḥ
Translation: "to be realized"
"All our activities, all our business, all our functions, whatever they be, are conscious or unconscious attempts on our parts to realize the Ātman, and until and unless we reach the Ātman, we cannot be happy, we cannot be satisfied, and we cannot put an end to the cycle of birth and death. We are perpetually born and we perpetually die to train ourselves for attunement of our being with the Ātman. Births and deaths are processes of training in the field of experience. We experiment with the things of the world, with a view to visualizing the Ātman in them, coming in contact with the Ātman in the objects. We love things because we hope that the Ātman is there in them, but we do not see it there because it is not in one place only. Why do we love things, love persons, love objects? Because we have a hope that the Ātman is there, and we go for it. We do not find it there, and so we go to another object – perhaps it is there – like the Gopis searching for Kṛṣṇa in different places. Kṛṣṇa! Are you here, are you there? You know, where; He is everywhere. The Gopis queried the trees, the plants, the bees and even the inanimate things. Have you seen Kṛṣṇa? Has Kṛṣṇa passed by this path? Where is Kṛṣṇa? Can you give an indication of Kṛṣṇa’s whereabouts? Madly did the Gopis ask of everything in creation, animate and inanimate. ‘Do you know Kṛṣṇa? Have you seen Him?’ In a similar manner, madly do we go after the things of the world. Is the Ātman here? Have you seen the Ātman? Can you get the Ātman here, there, in this, in that? It is nowhere! It is not in anything particularized, and, therefore, we cannot get the Ātman by any amount of search in the outer world of objects. So, all the loves of the world are futile in the end, and are bound to be frustrated, doomed to suffer, because of this erroneous approach to Reality made through the objects, to which Reality cannot be confined on account of their inherent structural defect. And, in this experimentation, we die. Life is too short. The experimentation does not end. In the next birth we do, again, experiment with things, because the objects in creation are infinite. We make infinite experiments, and the struggle goes on. This process is called Saṃsāra, transmigration; and in all the lives that we take, in all the deaths that we pass through, the Ātman cannot be seen, just as the Gopis could not see Kṛṣṇa until He Himself made a Will to appear before them. Nobody could inform the Gopis as to where Kṛṣṇa was. ‘I do not know: I do not know:’ this is what all the objects will tell you. What are we asking for, then? We have never seen it. And, considering this enigmatic situation of the quest for the Ātman, the Upaniṣad finally said that perhaps it can be realized only by him whom it chooses. You have to leave it to itself. You do not know how you can see it. There seems to be no means of knowing it. Nothing in the world can be a help to us in knowing it. Yam Eva Eṣa Vrinute Tena Labhyaḥ: Whom it chooses, he alone can obtain it. This seems to be a solution arrived at by the sage of the Kaṭha Upaniṣad. We are tired of the quest. And when the Gopis were fatigued in this arduous quest, when they became unconscious in their utter surrender to Kṛṣṇa, He revealed Himself. Now the time has come. The ego has gone; effort has ceased; one cannot do anything further; then He comes. You search, and search, and search, and you realize its futility. The ego realizes its limitations, and it ceases. When you know your limitations, you cease from all egoistic effort, and the cessation of the ego is the revelation of the Ātman. God comes when the ego goes. When you are nowhere, He alone is everywhere. He takes the position of your personality. You vanish, and He comes in, not before that. When the personalities of the Gopis vanished, Kṛṣṇa took possession of their hearts, and instead of the Gopis being there; Kṛṣṇa was there. The Jīva expires into Īśvara. This is the Ātman to be known, the Goal for which we live in this world. This is the fourth state of Consciousness, the Ātman, the Absolute, Brahman."
References:
- Sharvananda, Swami (1920). Mundaka and Mandukya Upanishads: With Sanskrit Text; Paraphrase with Word-For-Word Literal Translation, English, Rendering and Comments. Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math
- Krishnananda, Swami (1996). The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad. Retrieved from https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/mand_0.html. p. 89-90.
